Two Tall Trees

Two trees stand tall in a wind of change.

An endless burst of growth from ground to crown,

The crackled bark criss-crosses coarse to filigree.

Chocolate grain swirls around the knotty elephant eye,

Which stares unflinching over a landscape of memory.

At liberty, their arms reach out and lock,

They brush, touch, their clock hands tick.

They dance and sway, free radicals to run amok,

Conjoined in an underworld where rootlets drop

To intertwine and feed on fertile bedrock.

In tempest tested, they cling to Mother Earth.

Bending, the fragile florets lash and branches buckle.

Boughs bow as if to nod and cast their spell.

Hollowed out deadwood crumbles, cracks and falls.

Their golden canopy thinned, enlightened by the squall.

In drought, their green resplendent robes recede

From a crisp, lucent shoal of iridescent leaves

To the skeletal outline in penumbral haze.

Then, in an act of preservation, they mine, divine,

Inspire, inhale and when the rains descend, drink deep.